delivered the opinion of the court.
By an action begun in a state court in Harrison County, Texas, W. L. Roe sought to recover from the Texas & Pacific Railway Company, a Federal corporation, $30,000 as damages for personal injuries sustained through its negligence while he was in its employ as a brakeman and while both were engaged in interstate commerce. In due time and in the accustomed way, the case was removed into the District Court of the United States for that district upon the sole ground that it was one arising under a law of the United States in that the defendant was chartered by an act of Congress. The plaintiff then moved that the case be remanded upon the ground that it also arose under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (April 22, 1908, 35 Stat. 65, c. 149; April 5,1910, 36 Stat. 291, c. 143) and therefore was not removable. After a hearing, the motion was denied, for reasons, assigned in the second branch of the opinion in Van Brimmer v. Texas & Pacific Railway Co., 190 Fed. Rep. 394, 397. The plaintiff then petitioned this court for a writ of mandamus commanding *72 the judge of the District Court to remand the case. A rule to show cause was granted, and the respondent answered that the motion tp remand had'been denied because, upon consideration, he believed the case was lawfully removed.
As the case arose under a law of the United States, namely, the defendant’s Federal charter (see
Pacific Removal Cases,
The question presented to the District Court by the motion to remand, was, whether these provisions were intended to forbid a removal in every case falling within the Employers’ Liability Act, regardless of the presence of some independent ground of removal, as in this instance, or only to declare that the fact that a case arises under that act shall not be a ground of removal. Regarding the latter of these' alternatives as sustained by the- better reasoning, the court denied the motion; and upon this petition for mandamus we are asked to review that ruling, pronounce it erroneous, and direct the respondent to retract it and remand the case.
Whether the ruling was right or wrong, it was a judicial act, done in the exercise of a jurisdiction conferred by law, and, even if erroneous, was not void or open to collateral attack, but only subject to correction in an appropriate appellate proceeding.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co.
v.
*73
McCabe,
The accustomed office of a writ of mandamus, when directed to a judicial officer, is to compel an exercise of existing jurisdiction, but not to control his decision. It does not lie to compel a reversal of a decision, either interlocutory or final, made in the exercise of a lawful jurisdiction, especially where in regular course the decision may be reviewed upon a writ of error or an appeal.
Bank of Columbia
v.
Sweeny,
Rule discharged; petition dismissed.